


Waiting

by russantroll



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 10:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1775398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russantroll/pseuds/russantroll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam, nine years old, waits for his father to finish a job and thinks about the possibility of a different sort of life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting

There's a lot of waiting around.

Sam knows, now that he's older, that this is specific to his family. That other kids his age don't know what it's like to spend large, viscous chunks of time in the car or in crappy motel rooms. He knows, and the knowledge makes him resent the waiting in a way he never really used to.

He's begun, at last, to be impatient.

Today, the weather is good. The sun's shining and there are people out mowing their lawns or washing their cars. Today, like so many other days, he and Dean wait in the Impala while their father quizzes some poor woman on the suspicious death of her son. It's stiflingly hot and Dean is listening to music that Sam doesn't even like.

He gets out of the car.

To Dean, who asks where he's going, he says in a voice that even to his own ears sounds slightly whiny: “I'm not gonna go far.”

He shuts the car door – it thuds satisfyingly – and meanders away along the sidewalk, dragging his feet.

He passes the house where his father is now. The house with the grieving mother and absent son. There are dandelion clocks dotting the lawn at loose intervals.

Having nowhere to go, and conscious that he should remain in sight of the house and the car, Sam sits down on the lip of the sidewalk. (His jeans, old cast-offs from Dean and already too short in the leg, now expose a good few inches of puny white calf).

Okay, fine. He's out of the car. But the crux of it is that he's still waiting.

A group of kids, maybe somewhere between his age and Dean's, emerge from around the corner. There are five of them; three boys and two girls, and they're all laughing about something. One of the boys – tall; sandy-haired – gives his stockier, swarthy-skinned friend a good-natured shove. One of the girls says something to the other, reaching back over her shoulder to yank the hair-elastic free from her caramel-coloured curls as she does.

Sam watches them. He knows, and is now all too aware of the knowledge, that this is what 'normal' looks like. And the knowledge presses sharply against his chest like something hard and triangular. He has a painful desire to go over and talk to them, but he knows he won't, and he knows that even if he did, there would be no point. He and Dean and their dad will be gone from this town in a matter of days, probably, and then he'd never see them again anyway.

Write to us, they might say, on the off-chance that he'd actually manage to befriend them. But how could they ever write back, when he has no fixed address?

He pushes his hair off his forehead, sticky with sweat. The kids draw closer; close enough that e can hear what they're saying.

“I heard her parents actually let him sleep over.”

“I heard they already did it!”

“No way.”

“Ew!”

“In her house? When her parents are in?”

“Eww. God!”

They pass by him, on the opposite side of the street. None of them so much of glance in his direction, but they're close enough so that he can see the paisley print on one of the girls' shirt, and the logo on the tall boy's backpack. Then he's looking at their retreating backs and thinking how even if he got up and ran after them; even if he fell in beside them, he'd have no idea what to say. He doesn't care about the same things they do; doesn't know the same mundane excitements.

(They have their little routines and he has his, but they're worlds apart). He scrambles to his feet and heads back to the car.

He is nine years old and he's old enough to know the truth: that the day he began waiting to leave was the same day he stopped hoping to stay.


End file.
